Thursday 15 February 2020: On a beautiful sunny but windy day, I went with my friend Jean-Marie to visit an arm of the Rhine located near Gerstheim, known to the Alsatian fishermen: the Schollengiessen. The place is very frequented by fishermen at the time all winter because the white fish go up in this arm less cold than the river, in the prospect of spring spawning. Indeed, if the edges are often sandy-muddy, areas of gravel persist in the main bed of this arm of the Rhine, allowing many white fish to spawn there. I have fished there also last year in febryuary on chub .
It is in this hope that we came with our light fly rod and our dryflies and nymph boxes, leaving out the usual equipment of the reservoir. Unfortunately, the effects of the strong wind and the decrease in the barometer observed before leaving after lunch were combined to wedge insects and fish.
This did not prevent us from presenting our small dry flies and nymphs to schools of white fish including bleak, roach, chub and small asps. Alternating dry and nymph fishing on sight, we managed to deceive some of these fish: chub, bleak, asp and roach, including a single pretty fish, a chub about thirty centimeters. This one had made my heart beat by first being nonchalantly interested by my little CTC-1, before inspecting it, then pretending to be disinterested, before turning around for taking it delicately. Just for that emotion, I didn’t regret having made the trip. If I caught a roach with a nymph on sight, on a small MCA-4, that Jean-Marie touched 2 fish on an NFL-2, it was with dry that we took the most pleasure, thanks to the vision of ( rare) fish coming to the surface on our flies: if a FMF-2 on hook 20 gave me the greatest number of catches, we also had some fish on CTC-1, RTR, KMM-1, even on a CBF, for Jean -Marie, despite the absence of insects larger than 5 mm.
We really enjoyed these 2 hours of fishing, in a beautiful, almost spring sun, despite temperatures cooled by the disturbing wind.
